by James Ellroy
The two tiny Mex warriors put on a good fight, and the crowd ate it up. Coins rained down from the top tier; shouts in Spanish and English filled the arena. After four rounds I knew that Lee wasn’t going to show; the bantys, both cut bad, made me think of the butchered girl. I got up and left, knowing exactly where Lee was.
I drove back to 39th and Norton. The entire lot was lit up by arclights—as bright as day. Lee was standing just inside the crime scene rope. The night had turned cold; he was hunched into his letterman’s jacket as he watched the lab techs poke around in the weeds.
I walked over. Lee saw me coming and did a quick draw, shooting me with finger pistols, his thumbs the hammers. It was a routine he pulled when he was jacked up on Benzedrine.
“You were supposed to meet me. Remember?”
Arclight glow gave Lee’s raw nerved face a blue-white cast. “I said this was priority. Remember that?”
Looking off in the distance, I saw other vacant lots illuminated. “It’s priority for the Bureau, maybe. Just like Junior Nash is priority for us.”
Lee shook his head. “Partner, this is big. Horrall and Thad Green were down here a couple of. hours ago. Jack Tierney’s been detached to Homicide to run the investigation, with Russ Millard backstopping. You want my opinion?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s a showcase. A nice white girl gets snuffed, the Department goes all out to get the killer to show the voters that passing the bond issue got them a bulldog police force.”
“Maybe she wasn’t such a nice girl. Maybe that old lady that Nash killed was somebody’s loving granny. Maybe you’re taking this thing too personal, and maybe we let the Bureau handle it and get back to our job before Junior kills somebody else.”
Lee balled his fists. “You got any other maybes?”
I stepped forward. “Maybe you’re afraid of Bobby De Witt getting out Maybe you’re too proud to ask me for help to scare him away from the woman we both care for. Maybe we let the Bureau chalk up that dead girl for Laurie Blanchard.”
Lee uncoiled his fists and turned away: I watched him rock on his heels, hoping he’d be fighting mad or wisecracking or anything but hurt when I finally saw his face. I made fists, then shouted: “Talk to me, goddamnit! We’re partners! We killed four fucking men together, now you pull this shit on me!”
Lee turned around. He flashed his patented demon grin, but it came off nervous and sad, used up. His voice was raspy, stretched thin.
“I used to watchdog Laurie when she played. I was a scrapper, and all the other kids were afraid of me. I had a lot of girlfriends—you know, kiddie romance stuff. The girls used to tease me about Laurie, go on about how much time I spent with her, like she was my real sweetheart.
“See, I doted on her. She was pretty and she was a trouper.
“Dad used to talk about getting Laurie ballet lessons and piano lessons and singing lessons. I was gonna work goon squad at Firestone Tire like him, and Laurie was gonna be an artiste. It was just talk, but I was a kid, and it was real to me.
“Anyway, right around the time she disappeared, Dad was talking up this lesson stuff a lot, and it made me mad at Laurie. I started ditching her when she went to play after school. There was this wild girl who’d moved into the neighborhood. She was- a roundheels, and she used to get tanked on bathtub and put out for all the boys. I was clicking her when Laurie got snatched, when I should have been protecting my sister.”
I reached for my partner’s arm to tell him I understood; Lee pushed my hand away. “Don’t tell me you understand, because I’ll tell you what makes it bad. Laurie got snuffed. Some degenerate strangled her or chopped her up. And when she died, I was thinking ugly things about her. About how I hated her because Dad thought she was a princess and I was a thug. I pictured my own sister cut up like that stiff this morning, and I laughed about it while I was with that floozy, screwing her and drinking her father’s booze.”
Lee took a deep breath and pointed to the ground a few yards away. A separate, inside perimeter had been staked, the two halves of the body marked in quicklime. I stared at the outline of the spread legs; Lee said, “I’m gonna get him. With you or without you, I’m gonna get him.”
I dredged up a ghost of a smile. “See you at the Hall tomorrow.”
“With you or without you.”
I said, “I heard you,” and walked back to my car. Hitting the ignition, I saw another empty lot a block to the north light up.
Eight
The first thing I saw when I walked into the squadroom the next morning was Harry Sears reading the Herald headline: “Hunt Werewolf’s Den in Torture Slaying!!!” the second thing I saw was a chain of five men—two derelicts, two squarejohn types and one in county jail demins, manacled to a bench. Harry put his paper down, stammering, “C-c-confessors. S-s-said they s-sliced the girl.” I nodded, hearing screams coming from the interrogation room.
A moment later, Bill Koenig led a doubled-over fat man out the door, announcing to the bullpen at large, “He didn’t do it.” A couple of officers clapped satirically at their desks; a half dozen looked away, disgusted.
Koenig shoved the fat man out to the corridor. I asked Harry, “Where’s Lee?”
Harry pointed to Ellis Loew’s office. “W-with Loew. R-r-reporters, too.”
I walked over and peered through the crack in the doorway. Ellis Loew was standing in back of his desk, playing to a score of newshounds. Lee was seated at the DA’s side, dressed in his only suit. He looked tired—but nowhere near as edgy as he did last night.
Loew was sternly enunciating, “… and the heinous nature of the killing deems it imperative that we make every effort to catch this fiend as soon as possible. A number of specially trained officers, including Mr. Fire and his partner Mr. Ice, have been detached from their regular duties to aid in the investigation, and with men like them on the job, I think we can expect positive results soon. Moreover …”
I couldn’t hear for the pounding of blood in my head. I started to nudge the door open; Lee saw me, bowed to Loew and exited the office. He dogged me back to the Warrants cubicle; I wheeled around. “You got us detached, right?”
Lee put restraining hands on my chest. “Let’s take this slow and easy, okay? First off, I gave Ellis a memo. It said we got verified dope Nash blew our jurisdiction.”
“Are you fucking crazy!”
“Sssh. Listen, it was just to grease the skids. The APB on Nash still stands, the fuck pad is being staked out, every southside cop is out to cancel the bastard’s ticket. I’m gonna stay at the pad tonight myself. I’ve got binoculars, and I figure between them and the arclights I’ll be able to catch the plates on the cars that cruise down Norton. Maybe the killer’s gonna drive by to gloat. I’ll get all the license numbers, and check them against the DMV and R&I.”
I sighed. “Jesus, Lee.”
“Partner, all I want is a week on the girl. Nash is covered, and if he doesn’t get collared by then, we go back to him as our priority warrantee.”
“He’s too dangerous to let go. You know that.”
“Partner, he’s covered. Now don’t tell me you don’t want to build on your shine killings. Don’t tell me you don’t know that the dead girl is a better piece of pie than Junior Nash.”
I saw more Fire and Ice headlines. “One week, Lee. No more.”
Lee winked. “Copacetic.”
Captain Jack’s voice came over the intercom: “Gentlemen, everybody to the muster room. Now.”
I grabbed my notebook and walked through the bullpen. The ranks of the confessors had swollen, the new ones cuffed to radiators and heating pipes. Bill Koenig was slapping an old guy demanding to talk to Mayor Bowron; Fritzie Vogel was taking down names on a clipboard. The muster room was SRO, packed with Central and Bureau men and a shitload of plainclothes cops I’d never seen before. Captain Jack and Russ Millard were at the front, standing beside a floor microphone. Tierney tapped the mike, cleared his throat and spoke:
“Gentlemen, this is a general briefing on the 187 in Leimert Park. I’m sure you’ve all read the papers and you all know it’s a damn rough piece of work. It’s also a damn big piece of work. The mayor’s office has gotten a lot of calls, we’ve gotten a lot of calls, the City Council has gotten a lot of calls and Chief Horrall has gotten personal calls from a lot of people we want to keep happy. This werewolf stuff in the papers is going to get us a lot more calls, so let’s get going on it.
“We’ll start with the chain of command. I’m supervising, Lieutenant Millard is exec, Sergeant Sears is the runner between divisions. Deputy DA Loew is liaison to the press and civilian authorities, and the following officers are detached to Central Homicide, effective 1/16/47: Sergeant Anders, Detective Arcola, Sergeant Blanchard, Officer Bleichert, Sergeant Cavanaugh, Detective Ellison, Detective Grimes, Sergeant Koenig, Detective Liggett, Detective Navarette, Sergeant Pratt, Detective J. Smith, Detective W. Smith, Sergeant Vogel. You men see Lieutenant Millard after this briefing. Russ, they’re all yours.”
I got out my pen, giving the man next to me a gentle elbow to get more writing room. Every cop around me was doing the same thing; you could feel their attention rivet to the front of the room.
Millard spoke in his courtroom lawyer’s voice: “Yesterday, seven A.M.,Norton Avenue between 39th and Coliseum. A dead girl, naked, cut in half, right off the sidewalk in a vacant lot. Obviously tortured, but I’ll hold off on that until I talk to the autopsy surgeon—Doc Newbarr’s doing the job this afternoon at Queen of Angels. No reporters—there’s some details we don’t want them to know.
“The area has been thoroughly canvassed once—no leads so far. There was no blood where we found the body; the girl was obviously killed somewhere else and dumped in the lot. There’s a number of vacant lots in the area, and they’re being searched for weapons and bloodstains. An armed robbery-homicide suspect named Raymond Douglas Nash was renting a garage down the street—the place was checked for prints and bloodstains. The lab boys got zero, and Nash is not a suspect on the girl.
“There’s no ID on her yet, no matchup to anyone in the Missing Persons files. Her prints have been teletyped, so we should get some kind of report soon. An anonymous call to University Station started it all, by the way. The officer who caught the squeal said it was a hysterical woman walking her little girl to school. The woman didn’t give her name and hung up, and I think we can eliminate her as a suspect.”
Millard switched to a patient, professorial tone. “Until the body is ID’d, the investigation has to be centered on 39th and Norton, and the next step is recanvassing the area.”
A big collective groan rose. Millard scowled and said, “University Station will be the command post, and there’ll be clerks there to type up and collate the field officers’ reports. Clerical officers will be working up summary reports and evidence indexes. They’ll be posted on the squadroom board at University, with carbons distributed to all LAPD and sheriff’s divisions. You men here from other squads are to take what you hear at this briefing back to your station houses, put it on every crime sheet, every watch. Any information you get from patrolmen, you phone in to Central Homicide, extension 411. Now, I’ve got lists of recanvassing addresses for everyone but Bleichert and Blanchard. Bucky, Lee, take the same areas as yesterday. You men from other divisions, stand by; the rest of you men that Captain Tierney detached, see me now. That’s it!”
I jockeyed out the door and took service stairs down to the parking lot, wanting to avoid Lee and put some distance between him and my okay on the Nash memo. The sky had turned dark gray, and all the way to Leimert Park I thought of thunderstorms obliterating leads in the vacant lots, washing the sliced girl investigation and Lee’s grief over his little sister into the sewer until the gutters overflowed and Junior Nash popped his head out, begging to be arrested. As I parked my car, the clouds started to break up; soon I was canvassing with the sun beating down—and a new string of negative answers kiboshed my fantasies.
I asked the same questions I asked the day before, stressing Nash even harder. But this time it was different. Cops were combing the area, writing down the license numbers of parked cars and dragging sewers for women’s clothing—and the locals had listened to the radio and read the papers.
One sherry-breathing hairbag held out a plastic crucifix and asked me if it would keep the werewolf away; an old geezer wearing skivvies and a clerical collar told me the dead girl was God’s sacrifice because Leimert Park voted Democrat in the ‘46 Congressional. A little boy showed me a movie pinup of Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolfman and said that the vacant lot at 39th and Norton was the launching pad for his rocket ship, and a boxing fan who recognized me from the Blanchard fight asked me for my autograph, then told me straight-faced that his neighbor’s bassett hound was the killer, and would I please shoot the cocksucker? The sane nos I got were as boring as the nut answers were fanciful, and I started to feel like the straight man in a monstrous comedy routine.
At 1:30, I finished and walked back to my car, thinking about lunch and checking in at University Station. There was a piece of paper stuck under the wiper blades—a sheet of Thad Green’s personal stationery, with “Official Police Witness— admit this officer to autopsy of Jane Doe #31, 2:00 P.M., 1/16/47” typed in the middle of the page. Green’s signature was scrawled at the bottom—and it looked suspiciously like the writing of Sergeant Leland C. Blanchard. Laughing against my will, I drove to Queen of Angels Hospital.
The corridors were crowded with nun-nurses and oldsters on gurneys. I showed an elderly sister my badge and inquired after the autopsy; she crossed herself and led me down the hall, pointing to a double-doored entranceway marked PATHOLOGY.I walked up to the patrolman standing guard and flashed my invitation; he snapped to attention and swung the doors open, and I entered a small cold room, all antiseptic white, a long metal table in the middle. Two sheet-covered objects lay on top of it. I sat down on a bench facing the slab, shivering at the thought of seeing the girl’s death smile again.
The double doors opened a few seconds later. A tall old man smoking a cigar came in, along with a nun carrying a steno pad. Russ Millard, Harry Sears and Lee followed them, the Homicide exec shaking his head. “You and Blanchard keep turning up like bad pennies. Doc, can we smoke?”
The old man took a scalpel from his back pocket and wiped it on his trouser leg. “Sure. Won’t bother the girl any, she’s in dreamland for keeps. Sister Margaret, help me get that sheet off, will you?”
Lee sat down on the bench beside me; Millard and Sears lit cigarettes, then dug out pens and notebooks. Lee yawned, and asked me, “Get anything this morning?”
I saw that his Benzedrine juice was all but dead. “Yeah. A wolfman killer from Mars did the snuff. Buck Rogers is chasing him in his spaceship, and you should go home and sleep.”
Lee yawned again. “Later. My best tip was the Nazis. A guy told me he saw Hitler in a bar on 39th and Crenshaw. Oh Jesus, Bucky.”
Lee lowered his eyes; I looked at the autopsy slab. The dead girl was uncovered, her head lolling in our direction. I stared at my shoes while the doctor rambled on in medicalese:
“On gross pathology, we have a female Caucasian. Muscle tone indicates her age is between sixteen and thirty. The cadaver is presented in two halves, with bisection at the level of the umbilicus. On the upper half: the head is intact, with massive depressed skull fractures, facial features significantly obscured by massive ecchymoses, hematomas and edema. Downward displacement of nasal cartilage. Through-and-through laceration from both mouth corners across masseter muscles, extending through temporal mandibula joints upward to both earlobes. No visible signs of neck bruises. Multiple lacerations on anterior thorax, concentrated on both breasts. Cigarette burns on both breasts. Right breast almost completely severed from thorax. Inspection of upper half abdominal cavity reveals no free-flowing blood. Intestines, stomach, liver and spleen removed.”
The doctor took an audible breath; I looked up an
d watched him puff on his cigar. The steno nun caught up with her note taking and Millard and Sears eyeballed the stiff deadpan while Lee stared at the floor, wiping sweat from his brow. The doc felt both breasts, then said, “Lack of hypertrophy indicates no pregnancy at time of death.” He grabbed his scalpel and started poking around inside the bottom half of the corpse. I shut my eyes and listened.
“Inspection of the lower half of the cadaver reveals a midline longitudinal incision extending from the umbilicus to the symphysis pubis. Mesentery, uterus, ovaries and rectum removed, multiple lacerations on both posterior and anterior cavity walls. Large triangular gouge on left thigh. Sister, help me turn her over.”
I heard the doors open; a voice called out, “Lieutenant!” I opened my eyes to see Millard getting up and the doctor and nun wrestling the stiff onto its stomach. When it was backside up, the doctor lifted the ankles and flexed the legs. “Both legs broken at the knee, and healing, light lash marks on the upper back and shoulders. Ligature marks on both ankles. Sister, hand me a speculum and swab.”
Millard came back and handed Sears a piece of paper. He read it and nudged Lee. The doctor and nun turned the bottom half of the body over, spreading the legs wide. My stomach flip-flopped; Lee said, “Bingo.” He stared at a teletype sheet while the doc droned on about lack of vaginal abrasions and the presence of old semen. The coldness in his voice made me angry; I grabbed the sheet and read: “Russ—she’s Elizabeth Ann Short, DOB 7/29/24, Medford, Mass. Feds ID’d the prints—she was arrested in Santa Barbara 9/43. Background check in progress. Report back to Hall following autopsy. Call in all available field officers. —J.T.”
The doctor said, “That’s it on preliminary postmortem. Later on I’ll have some more specifics, and I’ll run some toxicological tests.” He draped both halves of Elizabeth Ann Short and added, “Questions?” The nun headed for the door clutching her Steno pad.
Millard said, “Can you give us a reconstruction?”